I'm telling a story set mainly in the Underworld, set in many dimensions. The main character is essentially Death, and he finds out that the Gods want to destroy Earth. This is a problem for him because while he feeds off death, he needs people alive to keep dying if that makes sense. But to these gods, Earth means no more to them than Ants do to humans. I need some ideas and pointers for something that could cause them want to end the planet. Any guesses?
Lack of belief. Blashpmey to their name. God ended the world in the bible for total disreguard to rules and regulation. They could want to repopulate with their own creations. They could want the earth for themselves the precious metals and resources. They could think humans were evolving to fast and so they want to wipe them from the earth so they are not threatened.
They simply find the habits of humans disgusting, such as eating meat or wearing clothes. Or the Earth itself is just ugly and disturbs the symmetry of space.
I like those ideas, my only thought now is how it could be prevented. Death couldn't go up against the Gods, if there was something on Earth that was too powerful for humanity? I'm thinking of something now, a big giant beast that could destroy the cosmos is coming through a portal opened on earth? But I really liked the symmetry of the universe idea.
My thought on reading your first post was that the Gods could want to destroy earth for sport, some sort of game or diversion, like kids might burn ants through a magnifying glass for fun. That would give you room to be creative with the details, and give the MC something to challenge, but it might be too Pratchettian?
Because it is a favored creation of another god they wish to annoy. You might want to read some mythology.
Long ago one of the gods promised humans that their spirits could gain access to their realm if they followed a certain code in life...well, that promise was made thousands of years ago before mankind spread like rabbits...thus humans are overpopulating their secrete realm. The only way to cut-off the human's entering their realm is to end human existence. It would be sort of interesting to have your main character that feeds off the dead actually be the evil one (like the devil), now fighting for human survival because it threatens his livelihood. Also, You can have the spirit-formed-humans learn about this plot that are already existing in the gods realm make some attack on the gods to prevent their assualt on earth.
Why not just finally have humans outsmart the Gods? It's not something that is overdone by any means. Our tech has made them obsolete and they try to take us out, but a team of scientist figure out how to nuke the heavens. Maybe Death helps them find out where the Gods congregate.
Maybe, having only seen the remake (which was horrible, not going anywhere near the sequel) I can only think of Hades manipulating Zeus to release the Kraken on the mortals because of blasphemy? Gods wiping out humanity is not a new idea, no denying that (Heck, it was in the Bible!) but there's always scope to be done differently. Yeah, that could be good, but wouldn't that be a spur of the moment thing? Like knocking over your younger brother's sandcastle, you wouldn't announce it and give people time to give their opinion and have a couple of people go on a quest to prevent it? And I've taken a lot from mythology, but I've given my own spin on it as well. I don't want to rewrite Eurydice, or tell a story about characters created long ago. I also can't think of any reason from mythology why the Gods would hate the humans. Maybe an exaggeration of certain Gods hate for mortals? Like Posiedon hated Odysseus because he blinded his son? The Olympians were always too close to home to wage war on the mortals, but the Gods in this story who live in another dimension could do it easily. One thing I need to point out, is that the Gods aren't going to destroy Earth. Death is going to stop them, but not by fighting the gods, sorting out whatever problem they have. Like with Cogito's idea, Death could go annoy the God that was going to be annoyed with the destruction of the earth or if the demon was going through the portal he could destroy the portal some way.
This kind of makes me think of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. One of the main characters in the books is Death, and his most frequent antagonists (at least in the books in which he's the star, and not just passing through for a pickup) are the Auditors of Reality. They like to make sure the universe is all nicely balanced equations and rocks moving in circles in space. They find the whole "life" business to be untidy, illogical and unnecessary. The gods of the Disc also sometimes feature, usually peering over a gameboard, rolling dice and watching the "pieces" move around. It also makes me think of how we act as writers--creating worlds, populating them, only to trash it when things don't go how we want it.
Small capitalization point here. The Christian God is capitalized. That extends even to pronoun references. Other than that, the word god(s) is not capitalized: the Egyptian gods, Norse gods, a pantheon of gods locked in battle. Names of gods are capitalized: Yahweh, Thor, Odin, Ra.
"What would Gods have against Earth?" Humans revering themselves as their own "gods"; attributing everything they have achieved to their own choices of free will and the determination of personal hard work. Wouldn't it piss you off to have helped a star or athlete get their start, only to not even get a "thank you" at their awards acceptance speech?
Hi i'm new to the website but I thought i'd throw an idea in. Perhaps the Gods aren't Gods after all? Maybe they are aliens that created us humans in the past with advanced tech. The humans, due to ignorance or w/e, saw the aliens as Gods. Now humans are developing technology, and might one day pose a threat to the Gods. Or some such thing... Or the "Gods" are just souls that refused to move on to higher dimensions or reincarnate due to the trappings of desire for earthly power. And so these "Gods" can only be seen by a rare few nowadays due to past extermination of those with the ability to "see" them, witches (Salem burnings etc)
They once created the Earth believing it to be a place of harmony, love and compassion. They created the humans, believing them to be the guardians of nature and the wildlife. But then they witness that the humans do nothing but seek out ways to destroy one another for stupid reasons, destroy the enviornment and kill everything and anything that moves. The gods feel the humans are corrupted, they feel betrayed by their own creation, feel that the humans no longer care about anything but destruction, and decide to put the Earth out of her misery by ending it. But they don't want to destroy ALL life on the planet, no! They just want the humans to drop dead, so they...do something that only you can think of that targets only humans with one intention: Cleanse the Earth of humanity once and for all! They had failed in their duties as guardians, so they must all be erased.
How about the concept that thousands of years ago Death got fid up with the concept of being the man stuck in the underworld, so he went against them and managed to banish the other Gods. However they have finally figured out how to come back against him hence they are here to wipe out all of life.
I’ve been looking at this thread for daysbecause I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this concept! Suggestions: You have one protag (Death) and manyantags (the gods) – why not also have one antag with your premise “goodvs evil”. The irony could be that Death ends up the “good guy” and thegod ends up the “bad guy”. Why the gods want to end the planet: Simple – because they feel they, orsomething valuable in their world, is being threatened. Maybe you knowthis or maybe it is revealed throughout the story. What if they end upbeing wrong? (It’s easy to be swayed in a group). Interesting: So Death “finds out” they want todestroy the planet – how? Someone from his side or theirs? How does heknow this is valid and not a distraction? Can this source be trusted? And: Is the planet being destroyed or justthose who inhabit it? You know there will be one that survives, or at leastlingers, to reveal something unknown to the others. Is that the sourceof the knowledge? Maybe this source is playing them both – who would dothis and why? What would be their motive?
Hi, Head to the holy books is my suggestion. So here's a few ideas from the Bible: Adam and Eve cast out because they ate an apple and gained free will. The Tower of Babel destroyed and people cast to the wind because the men who built it wanted to become as gods themselves. The Great Flood - sent because men had become too evil / sinful i.e. weren't obeying the Lord and he wanted a fresh batch to start again. The Plagues of Egypt because God's people were being enslaved. Any of these could be a valid reason for Gods to want to destroy man. And of course if there are multiple gods, they could be vieing with one another, or peeved with each other's worshippers. Cheers, Greg.
After reading the first several replies, and skimming over the rest, I'm gonna try and keep to the initial post. I'm gonna start by asking questions. 1. Is the Underworld more along the lines of the Judeo-Christian version or of the Greco-Roman myths? 2. What kind of gods are these that want to destroy the world? Did these gods create the world, etc? Are they based on mythology or of your own imagination? 3. Are these (so-called) gods really gods? I ask the last question because if earth and humanity are nothing more than an anthill crawling with ants to these gods then they do not sound like gods (more like imperfect beings, no different than humans, such as aliens). Their reason(s) for wanting to destroy earth and the human race shouldn't be the focus of the story, especially since I think the "reason" already given is good enough to start with; earth means no more to the gods than ants do to humans. With that, Death can explore/discover that these gods are not really gods. But then again, that is why I ask what kind of gods these are that you are writing about. I strongly recommend, if you're leaning towards universal symmetry and interstellar concepts (like trans-dimensional beings and monsters) then I recommend, along with what others have suggested, to look into the concept of ancient astronauts/aliens (e.g. Erich Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, etc).
Just a thought, What if the 'gods' want to destroy earth because the souls of the dead have been slowly making death stonger and stronger to the point where he could eventually overthrow them himself? Jim
Awesome to see lot of new replies guys! I'll explain stuff a bit more. The gods that I want to create are going to be a cross between Norse/Greek myths and legends with H.P. Lovecraft's demons. Earth was created long ago, as entertainment maybe? Same reason you'd create a huge lego construction. Then say, after an afternoon (Immortals would perceive time strangely I think) you want to start again, you're bored of it. Except you've got infinite lego bricks and you honestly can't be bothered to take it down so you put it in a cupboard and build something new. That's how I want them to see Earth. A toy discarded. However, Death still needs this planet to survive. He's not evil, not by any means, he's just not got the nicest of jobs. And he depends on this job. It feeds him. So when he finds out that the blokes upstairs want to destroy it, he's a bit shocked - he feeds on Death, but without life there is not death (does that makes sense?). This is why he needs to go up and stop it. Now back to the metaphor, if a Lego Model you made years ago threatened to destroy you, you'd just smash it straight away, yeah? So why don't they? (Because it would be a terrible story, that's why.) I need a reason why it doesn't happen straight away and Death isn't a very powerful being, so he can't go up against them. I'm thinking he could beg them, almost for more time and then go sort out their problem? I still need to work out what the problem is. By the way, the underworld is more like the Norse-Greek ones, I'm taking a lot of inspiration from those myths.
If i were a God, looking upon this planet i had created (for example; earth) i would be pretty sad that humanoids were destroying everything natural, throwing off the natural balance of things- over fishing, over hunting, polluting, and killing each other- essentially destroying everything i had created. I would be pretty mad and think that humans had no respect and were pretty selfish and so i would either... 1) let them just destroy themselves 2) smite them and start again (and learn from my mistakes)
